and elegant in a line of gray-green military aircraft. The consternation of the previ- ous evening deepened to alarm. Why had Montesinos returned? Did it herald a military coup? Fujimori, of course, had heard the news. Alerted by United States officials, Fujimori called Montesinos while his plane sat on the runway at Guayaquil and tried to persuade him not to continue to Peru. Fujimori closed the conversation by asking Montesinos to call him at nine 0' clock the next morning. Evidentl)', Fujimori believed he'd get the call, according to a palace aide, Guido Lucioni, who told me that, when no call came, Fujimori appeared to have pan- icked. Lucioni was crossing a courtyard on the palace grounds when he noticed it was full of cars. Fujimori had summoned the commanders of the armed forces and was insisting that they travel with him in his vehicle. (One of them wanted to re- trieve a mobile phone and was told he wouldn't need it.) Fujimori then armed his aides-de-camp-they normally didn't carry guns-and informed his hastilyas- sembled entourage that they were going to search for Montesinos. The President had always had a weakness for the action- man image: he had posed at the head of combat troops, and in Peru's many crises he had liked to be seen to be in command. But he was posing with troops whose loy- alty to him had been secured by Mon- tesinos. No with Montesinos the q Fujimori, as the hunter, had no idea whom to trust If he used theAnny to hunt Mon- tesinos, would it answer to his command? Or was it part of a new Montesinos plot, in which Fujimori was the quarry? Fujimori's movements were broadcast live. I watched as a convoy of vehicles roared out of the back gate of the palace, followed by a scramble of television crews and the palace press corps. Then the convoy stopped abruptly, blocking traffic and bringing the press to a disor- derly halt. The reporters emerged from their cars, clearly bewildered, just as the President took off again. By the time the press caught up with him on Las Palmas Avenue, he was entering the building that housed the Special Forces Division. The President reappeared, the convoy took off: and then came to another stop. Fujimori got out and talked for nearly ten minutes on his mobile phone. He was handed a document, which he ostenta- tiously signed on the roof of his car; he got back in and sped off to the head- quarters of the intelligence service. My phone was ringing. "Are you watching this?" It was a friend. "Has he gone mad?" Hadhe gone mad? I t was hard to leave the television. That evening, highlights of Fujimori's day were replayed again and again. He had visited four more military installa- tions and, in a surreal late-night last- minute flourish, directed his convoy to a shopping center, where he visited a cou- ple of shops and then a Wong super- market. Was he shopping for groceries, or hoping to find Montesinos at the checkout? Four unidentified young men were arrested, the news reported; per- haps they had been moved to verbal abuse at the sight of the President in the aisles of their supermarket. The next day, César Gaviria and his delegation of the Organization of American States arrived for the negotia- tions and were confronted by the sight of Fujimori in combat boots and a black leather jacket: he was ready for another day of chasing Montesinos. It was a long dar Fujimori, accompa- nied by his doctor and his butler, rushed from place to place, barking orders, furi- 0us, mounting one car after another as an impromptu podium. At one point, he ar- rested three of Montesinos's men and had them carted off to the palace. Jorge Po- lack, one of several congressmen of flex- ible loyalties, accused Fujimori of detain- ing the men illegallr Mter all, whatever powers the President might have thought he had, they did not include the personal right to arrest whomever he chose, and the men were released. I was in a taxi on October 24th when Montesinos spoke. A Lima radio station was broadcasting what sounded like a stage-managed interview with Peru's most famous fugitive. He was an inno- cent man, Montesinos was saying. He just wanted to come home. "I hope with all my heart that our Peru can continue toward the goals it has set itself and that all Peruvians can live in peace." For an electrifYing moment, there seemed to be nothing but this, the voice of the man from the shadows. Then he was gone. C ould Montesinos be found? He had given a telephone interview to a Mexican magazine, but after that dra- matic afternoon on the radio station nothing more had been heard of him. When I returned to Lima in November, I was given a mobile-phone number, but it just rang out. No one in Montesinos's family would talk and nobody would admit to having been a friend, though it was a commonplace in Lima that Mon- tesinos was still pulling strings. I called on Congressman Polack, who seemed to have some kind of Montesinos con- nection. His party loyalty had mysteri- ously changed in Fujimori's favor dur- ing those busy weeks at the beginning of his third term. Now, in the aftermath of the Kouri video, he had become an anti- Fujimori figure again, one of several fresh re-defections that had left Fuji- mori perilously exposed to a possible im- peachment by congress. I asked Polack about Montesinos. He shrugged and began to talk about his of- fice furnishings. "This partition," he said, gesturing. "The computers, the carpet. I paid for all of it." He spoke loudl)', and his manner was abrasive. "What a pity;" I said, "that you have to run for reëlection just when you've got the office how you want it." He scowled. "When I did all this, it was meant to last five years," he said. By then, it seemed unlikely that it would last a month. The Swiss govern- ment had announced that it had frozen five bank accounts containing fifty mil- lion dollars believed to be connected to Montesinos and to money laundermg. Later, the Swiss declared their suspicion that the money came from commissions on arms sales. More money was discov- ered in offshore banks, some in the names of members of Montesinos's fam- ily. At the suggestion of Bustamante, Fu- jimori appointed a special prosecutor, a respected lawyer namedJosé Ugaz, to fol- low the money trail. (Meanwhile, Fuji- mori was continuing to follow his own bi- zarre evidence trail, conducting searches of various residences and offices owned by Montesinos and seizing videotapes, documents, watches, and other valuables, THE NEW YOR.KER, MAR.CH 5, 2001 71